Liland affair

On 24 December 1969, two men, John Olav Larsen and Håkon Edvard Johansen, were found murdered with severe head injuries at Glemmengata 73 in Fredrikstad, Norway, an address known locally as a gathering place for people with substance abuse problems. An axe was assumed to be the murder weapon. Three substance abusers were arrested near the scene; two were released, while the third, Per Kristian Liland, was imprisoned and, in July 1970, convicted by the Eidsivating Court of Appeal of the premeditated murder of Larsen and the murder of Johansen in an attempt to conceal a punishable offence. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, which at the time meant 12 years, with a possible extension of up to 10 years if deemed a continued danger due to mental disorder.

The conviction rested heavily on the determination that the murders occurred on 22 December, the only date on which Liland could be placed at the scene. A local doctor who examined the bodies had entered ambiguous and later dates on the death certificates, and court-appointed medical experts nonetheless concluded the deaths could have occurred on 22 December. Several witnesses testified to having seen the victims alive after that date, but the court disregarded this testimony. Liland's lawyer, Alf Nordhus, appealed to the Supreme Court, which rejected the appeal in November 1970. Subsequent applications to reopen the case, supported by extensive documentation gathered by Sten and Vibeke Ekroth, including recordings of witnesses, were rejected by the Eidsivating Court of Appeal in 1975 and by the Supreme Court's Appeal Committee in 1976.

Liland served his sentence and had it extended to the maximum permitted ten years as a preventive measure, remaining imprisoned until 22 June 1993. The day after his release, he began a further attempt to have the case reopened, advanced by lawyers Ole Jakob Bae and Cato Schiøtz. New medical experts disputed the original prosecution experts' theory about how long one victim had survived after injury, and it emerged that the original experts had privately disagreed without this being disclosed at trial. It also came to light that a food coupon found in Larsen's pocket, dated 23 December, had not been presented to the original court and that related police report details had apparently been altered; the coupon itself later went missing.

On 29 April 1994, the Eidsivating Court of Appeal ruled the case should be reviewed, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court in September 1994. The prosecution subsequently dropped its objection to a full acquittal, and on 21 November 1994, without further evidence being presented, the court acquitted Liland. He was awarded 13,740,000 kroner in compensation for lost income and non-economic losses. Liland died in 1996. The murders of Larsen and Johansen remain unsolved and are now subject to Norway's statute of limitations.